Everyone’s
heard of the “friendship” of Jonathan and David, that developed
between the older prince and the young hero and that dominates the story of
David’s stay in court described in 1 Sam 18-20. Prior to this, Jonathan,
King Saul’s eldest son, had gained his father a brave victory over the
dreaded Philistines, but then was suddenly sidelined by Saul because of his
popularity (chs. 13-14) In fact, Saul’s egotistical behavior and disobedience
toward God finally leads the Lord to reject his reign and send Samuel the
prophet to secretly anoint David, a boy in Bethlehem, to be the next king
of Israel (chs. 15-16). Soon, however, David becomes a national hero after
he surprising steps forward with his slingshot to face and kill Goliath, the
menacing Philistine giant (ch. 17). When he brings the great head to the king’s
house, Prince Jonathan sees David for the first time and is so drawn to the
handsome boy that he immediately makes a “covenant” with him,
expressing his love (18:1-4). As David’s popularity grows, however,
so does Saul’s jealousy; and although Jonathan nurtures and shields
David from his hostile father, finally they must part (18:5–20:42) so
that David can go into hiding and on the run. Later, Jonathan does manages
a rendezvous with David (23:15-18), which turns out to be their last meeting
since Saul and Jonathan are thereafter killed in battle (ch. 31). When David
hears of this, he so grief-stricken that he writes a public elegy, which expresses
openly his love for Jonathan and his sense of loss (2 Sam 1). The full story
of Jonathan and David extends from 1 Sam 13 through 2 Sam 1.

Traditional
interpreters of this story have been careful to view the relationship of Jonathan
and David as anything but romantic. For example, David Payne (1970)
wrote, “It is interesting that David’s stay at Saul’s court
is told almost entirely in terms of his relationship with Jonathan”
– yet Jonathan’s feelings are (simply) an “admiration and
respect for David.”1 Rabbi Israel Weisfeld (1983)
called it the “classic description of genuine unselfish love,”
Robert Pfeiffer (1948) “intense and sincere, but nonetheless virile
[i.e. manly, and not homosexual],” and J.A. Thompson (1974) “the
kind of attachment people had to a king who could fight their battles for
them.”2 Stan Rummel (1976) argued that Jonathan’s
giving of his robe and weapons to David in the covenant was simply a political
symbol for handing the throne over to him.3 Jerry Landay
(1998) wrote, “The friendship of Jonathan and David was the embodiment
of the sheer love of man for man, an intimacy based on shared experiences
and dangers, … a kind of intuitive trust that transcends the taint of
ambition, jealousy or the claim of sex.”4 Many
of the nonsexual observations made here are true, of course, but was that
the whole of it? That is the $64,000 question.

What can
be said confidently at the beginning of our study on this topic is that there
has been a long-standing suspicion and recently a growing minority view that
there is a homoerotic subtext in this story. Chrysostom (4th cent. bishop
of Constantinople) interpreted Saul’s outburst in 1 Sam 20:30-31 as
condemning Jonathan as “enervated [weak] and effeminate and having nothing
of a man” – which has the ring of a gay slur about it.5
On the other hand, Peter Abelard (French theologian, c. 1100) would
extend David’s lament (2 Sam 1:25-26) into 110 lines, writing, ‘to
outlive you [Jonathan] / Is to die at every moment: Half a soul is not / Enough
for life…”6 John Boswell (1994) wrote that
early gay Christian saints surely found a “hallowed tradition”
for same-sex love in the story of Jonathan and David, and notes that the term
“brother” (that David applies to Jonathan, 2 Sam 1:26) has long
been applied in the past with special meaning in same-sex relationships.7
One early chronicler of the homosexual love of Edward II (king of England,
1307-27) wrote, “Upon looking upon him [Piers Gaveston], the son of
the king immediately felt such love for him that he entered into a covenant
of constancy, and bound himself with him before all other mortals with a bond
of indissoluble love, firmly drawn up and fastened with a knot.” In
his Life of Edward II (c. 1326?), the Monk of Malmesbury further compared
Edward’s love for Piers to that of Jonathan for David and of Achilles
for Patroclus, only the king’s love was “incapable of moderate
favor.”8

After
the publication of Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male
(1948), some writers began to take a fresh look at the friendship of Jonathan
and David. For example, the theologian David Mace (1953) called this friendship
a good example of “the comparatively harmless homosexual attachments
of adolescence” that sometimes occur,9 while psychiatrist
George Henry (1955) wrote that Jonathan and David definitely had a sexual
relationship, in which the prince Jonathan was the aggressor and the ambitious
David the willing seductee, “unreservedly responsive,” although
this was a passing phase.10 Raphael Patai (1960), a
Middle East anthropologist, wrote: “The love story between Jonathan
the son of King Saul, and David the beautiful young hero, must have been duplicated
many times in royal courts in all parts of the Middle East and in all periods”
– one example being Amin (in 8th cent. Baghdad), son of Caliph Harun
al-Rashid, who fell in love with a page boy named Kautar.11

The first
scholar to present a full-blown case for the Biblical text suggesting a homoerotic
relationship was Tom Horner (Ph.D., Columbia) in Jonathan Loved David
(1978). He recalls the “world’s first great love story,”
between Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and Enkidu, his inseparable companion, an
epic poem that was widely disseminated in the ancient Near East. “No
mourner in the history of the world – except perhaps Alexander at the
passing of his friend Hephaestion… – has ever been more broken
up over the loss of his (or her) beloved friend” as was King Gilgamesh
over Enkidu’s untimely demise; and David in his expression of love and
loss over Jonathan’s death follows in this tradition.12
A crack in mainstream commentary occurred in J.P. Fokkelman’s three-volume
Narrative Art and Poetry in the Books of Samuel, where he wrote (vol.
2, 1986): “The love of Jonathan does not have to be nailed to the mast
of a late capitalist liberation front whose members, after centuries of sinister
suppression of homosexuals, wish to designate homosexual love the highest
form of humanity. It would be even less sound to assure us in suspiciously
strong tones that Jonathan and David were most definitely not gay.”13

However,
it was only in the 1990s that a full stream of new research began to appear,
analyzing the text and story of Jonathan and David in greater depth and wider
scope. Walter Brueggemann, professor of OT at Columbia Theological Seminary
(Decatur, GA), in First and Second Samuel (1990), wrote that the attention
given to David’s unusual beauty (1 Sam 16:12) may be noted here “in
anticipation of the enormous attraction David is to have in the coming narratives
for both men and women. Or perhaps his appearance is noted because those who
valued the story most wanted to hear of his loveliness.”14
Gary Comstock, in Gay Theology without Apology (1993), draws from Joseph
Cady’s insights in an essay on Walt Whitman where he states that “gay
writers writing in a time that is hostile to gay people had to invent protective
strategies that allow them to express themselves while sufficiently guarding
themselves against social exposure and punishment.” Comstock notes that
in the time of Jonathan and David, such expressions of friendship and comradeship
as we read in the story may have been “appropriate terms” that
were “conventional to covenant making” in that period; yet at
the same time they served as a vehicle for the expression of same-sex love.
Also, the “sharing of attention between Saul and Jonathan [in David’s
elegy] provides a good cover” for David’s special feelings for
Jonathan.15

Danna
Fewell (Perkins School of Theology, Dallas) and David Gunn (Texas Christian
University, Fort Worth), in their book In Gender, Power and Promise
(1993), note that, until recently, most writing on the Jonathan and David
story has come “out of a strongly homophobic tradition” and they
suggest, “On the contrary, far from stretching probability, a homosexual
reading … finds many anchor points in the text.” Passages that
especially call for a new analysis include Jonathan’s covenant of love
made with David (1 Sam 18:1-4), Saul’s sexual insult hurled at Jonathan
(20:30-31), and David’s lament for his lost beloved (2 Sam 1:26).16
Francisco Garcia-Treto (1993), in an article on poetic inclusions in 1-2 Samuel,
notes that in the elegy “David … opens his heart to expose to
the reader a stunning, sudden glimpse into the intimate feelings of his soul.
It is fascinating, and oddly embarrassing at the same time, to hear him cast
all reserve or restrain aside and wail for the loss of Jonathan.”17
David Halpern (professor of literature at MIT) noted (1990), “As
in the Gilgamesh epic, so in the Books of Samuel the relationship between
friends is constructed as both fraternal [like between brothers] and conjugal
[like between husband and wife].”18

David
Jobling in 1 Samuel (1998) notes that there is more mention of the
love these two men had for each other and of them spending time in each other’s
company than is ever noted between David and either Michal or Abigail, his
first two wives who are also described in 1 Samuel. “If these features,
along with sex, constitute ‘the love of women’ as David has experienced
it, then Jonathan’s love does indeed ‘pass the love of women.’
… Nothing in the text rules out, and much encourages the view that David
and Jonathan had a consummated gay relationship. The text does not force this
conclusion on us; there are obvious cultural reasons why it would not. But
it is at least as valid as any other.”19 Jonathan
Kirsch writes in King David: The Real Life of the Man Who Ruled Israel
(2000): “David, whose very name means ‘beloved,’ attracts
both men and women, inspiring sometimes a pristine love and more often a frankly
carnal one.” He adds, “The nature of the love between David and
Jonathan is one of the most tantalizing mysteries of the biblical life story
of David.” What does “the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul
of David” mean? A more worldly reading suggests that the covenant was
not a love pact but a “political arrangement.” But “something
more heartfelt and more carnal may have characterized the love of David and
Jonathan, even if the Bible dares not speak its name. … Much effort
has been expended in explaining away David’s declaration of love for
Jonathan, a declaration that suggests an undeniable homoerotic subtext.”20

This
coming review, therefore, will seek to survey the growing body of research
that sees a probable homoerotic undercurrent in the Jonathan and David story
and to investigate carefully those textual clues and cultural factors that
have been used to support such a conclusion. To begin with, however, we must
take a look at how homosexuality was viewed more broadly throughout the ancient
Near East, beginning with Egypt.